I waited nearly seven years for this game.

If you ever wanted to see a retro-inspired turn based JRPG done right in today’s age, you don’t have to look any further than Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age on the GBA. Everything about both those games; The story, how it plays, how it used the hardware and how it add onto the barebones hack-and-slash formula made them masterpieces in my eyes. At that time, there wasn’t any other game like it that you could take with you wherever you go.

Camelot and Nintendo’s Golden Sun series garnered a respectable amount of followers. (Though this is nothing compared to another certain Nintendo RPG involving monsters being carried around in balls and fight at your command.) Back in those days, it was said that the series would be made into a trilogy. However The Lost Age ended up finishing the story and hopes of a third game were dashed after a couple of years.

A year and a half ago I thought this game was dead. Then, Nintendo dropped a bomb at their E3 2009 press conference by announcing that Golden Sun DS was coming out in the Spring of 2010.

I did things that I don’t think I’d go into detail here. Let’s just reference a certain satirical song by The Lonely Island and leave it that. In a nutshell, I just ate a grape.

Today, the golden sun rises again. The newest installment of this game is in my hands. Does it stack up to what the original two were like so far?

What is this game like?

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is the third installment in the series, taking 30 years after the end of The Lost Age. In this game you play as Matthew, the son of Isaac from the first game, as he and his friends embark on adventure to save Weyard from impending doom. One thing you must know about this game first, is that the core game mechanics have not been changed at all compared to the first two. Dark Dawn plays exactly like its predecessors before it. Whether or not it’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you, but to me it’s a good thing because for the type of game it is, it was perfect.

As with the other entries in the Golden Sun series, Dark Dawn uses the old-school JRPG template as its base, with turn-based combat and character-separated inventories. That’s as far as the game’s basic systems go, however. As most series vets know, djinn add a whole layer of complexity and customization to the game. Each djinni belongs to one of the four main elements (Mercury – Water, Venus – Earth, Jupiter – Wind, and Mars – Fire) and has its own in battle ability that can be used by the character its assigned to when it is set to them. Any standby djinn can be used to summon various entities into battle to deal massive damage to your opponents. Having certain djinn set to each character affects that character’s class and what psynergies they can use. There are 70+ djinn total that have to be split evenly between up to eight characters which adds up to numerous possibilities in how to set your party up.

Outside of battle, you will come across dungeons with various puzzles in which you will have to make use of your psynergy to clear obstacles. To solve some of these, you may have to move a giant post with your Move psynergy, burn up a root blocking your path with Fireball, or cause a flower to rise into the air using Whirlwind. Dark Dawn introduces a couple of new field psynergies, except at this point the only one I’ve found so far is Grip, which is a venus element psynergy that allows you to pull yourself to an object across a gap or grab a faraway item that you can’t just walk to.

For those that haven’t played Golden Sun or Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the start of the game makes a semi-brief recap of the story from the first two games so that you understand the story so far. I found this to be a much better touch, especially since back in 2003 I ended up playing The Lost Age first and ended up really confusing me, because it just threw me into the game immediately where the first game left off and giving me no background. (I did eventually go back and play the first one, though.)

The presentation, both visibly and audibly, hasn’t changed very much from its GBA predecessors aside from the obvious upgrades. Dark Dawn chooses not to mess with a good formula and keeps the ambiance alive from the first two with lush environments and very suiting music, the most notable being the traditionally fast-paced battle music which is something that I really enjoyed before.

This game, however, has one seemingly glaring flaw, and that is the lack of backtracking. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has multiple points in the story that act as a “point of no return,” cutting you off from the world you passed before and leaving you no chance to backtrack and collect any djinn or summon tablets that you missed. It’s possible to miss over half of the djinn because of this, and not all of them are apparent so I really suggest keeping a guide handy and knowing where these cutoff points are. In generally it’s really an annoyance; In most RPGs the game world expands as you advance further, but Dark Dawn closes it off as you finish with it.

Pros
Doesn’t change a formula that was perfect the first time around.
Able to effective take an old system and teach it new tricks for a great game.
Deep storyline

Cons
Lots of dialog, something that Camelot seems to do. Kraden still being alive doesn’t help with that.
World is cut off as you advance, can miss a LOT if you don’t know where things are.
“Onward!” after every cutscene is unnecessary.

Final Thoughts:
This game was a long time coming. It was said back in the days that Golden Sun was meant to be a trilogy and Dark Dawn opens the way for it to move onwards with this. I was really excited for this game, and I am thrilled to see it live up to my expectations and be just as enjoyable and amazing as the first two. Does the golden sun rise again? Definitely. I can’t wait to continue with this adventure. I just hope that these opinions remain the same as I complete the game.